UConn's Ollie has little time, but big opportunity

• Kevin Ollie went from an overlooked high school player to a UConn star to a 13-year NBA career
• Though hand-picked by his former coach and boss, Ollie has his own style -- perhaps for the better
• Ollie is only under contract through April 4, but his players want to help him win a longer deal

STORRS, Conn. – He had just beaten Michigan State in his head coaching debut, been the subject of a two-hour love-fest on ESPN and earned the kind of instant credibility few thought was possible for someone whose contract will expire in April. If there was ever a told-you-so moment at Kevin Ollie's fingertips, beating Hall of Fame-bound Tom Izzo in front of a primetime national audience was about as good as it could possibly get.

But upon arriving back in Connecticut last weekend, Ollie didn't march into athletic director Warde Manuel's office and demand an extension or go running to the media to campaign for the job long-term.

Instead, he simply spent a low-key Sunday with his mother and daughter at the UConn women's game, which doesn't sound like much until you consider the symbolism of the men's basketball coach at this school calling a truce on the decades-long feud between the two sides of the Huskies basketball universe.

"I'm a big fan of Geno (Auriemma) and what he's done for 28, 29 years with his program," Ollie said. "He's just a great person. My daughter had a blast. I'm going to bring her to a practice so she can spend some time with the girls.

It's impossible to know what the next four months holds for Ollie, whether he will gain enough support for Manuel to make him the permanent coach or whether the seemingly impossible circumstances of this UConn season will eventually collapse on him. But give Ollie this much: So far he's killing them with kindness, and, through two games anyway, winning them over with competence.

"I think what Kevin is trying to do is what every young head coach hopes to do and that is build a community around his team," said Auriemma, who has seven national titles. "He knows he's got a tough job ahead of him, and what he's all about is inclusion. He's an honest and sincere and hardworking guy who expects a lot out of himself and I'm not surprised that he's reaching out to a lot of people, not just on campus but off campus as well."

Few college basketball storylines this fall are as compelling as UConn, which won the NCAA title just two seasons ago but now faces a highly uncertain future as a national power.

On Sept. 13, just a month before he was set to begin his 27th season at UConn, Jim Calhoun announced his retirement. The timing was nothing if not calculated. For the past few years, Calhoun had let it be known that he wanted Ollie, who as a player helped spark UConn's climb in the early 1990s, to succeed him. With practice just weeks away from starting, Manuel had no choice but to go along.

But replacing a legend in college athletics is rarely that clean and simple. Manuel has only been at UConn since February, and his success will be largely determined by whether the program remains nationally relevant in a post-Calhoun world. Instead of having a succession plan shoved down his throat, he gave Ollie – who only retired from the NBA and joined the UConn staff in 2010 -- a contract through April 4.

"I'm very pleased with what I've seen and the way he's handled the team in practice," Manuel said, "the issues of being a head coach that you deal with off the court and the things that are required to manage the team and the environment, and obviously I'm very pleased with the successful start. It's an ongoing assessment."

Meanwhile, UConn has been banned from the Big East and NCAA tournaments this year for a poor Academic Progress Rate between 2007 and 2011. Two starters from last season left early for the NBA Draft (Jeremy Lamb and Andre Drummond) and two other significant contributors transferred (Roscoe Smith to UNLV and Alex Oriakhi to Missouri). For a coach on a one-season tryout, these are hardly ideal circumstances.

"There's nothing I can do about it," Ollie said. "Warde is going to have his decision made on how these kids play, and at the end of the day I'm going to be fine. I'm going to love UConn and bleed blue no matter if I'm here or not here. I'm just approaching every day like I'm going to be here for a lifetime."

Ollie is as pleasant and accommodating a public persona as his predecessor was gruff and confrontational. He's not complaining about his situation, even as he understands that the lack of job security makes everything more difficult, especially in recruiting (UConn has just two players committed, neither of whom ranks among Scout.com's top 100 prospects). He's using his personal story, going from a no-star high school prospect to a 13-year NBA career, as a metaphor for how he can succeed in this job. And his commitment to the school as an alum is genuine: Just yesterday, he pledged $100,000 toward construction of the new basketball practice facility. He's even going out of his way to break down the fiefdom mentality that has caused friction between the men's and women's programs for so long.

"I think he's the perfect face for UConn basketball," junior forward Niels Giffey said.

But will that be enough?

UConn has always been one of college basketball's more unlikely powers, built through Calhoun's sheer stubbornness and will. It has always been a fairly remote, rural campus in a small state that doesn't produce much basketball talent. Now it's still all those things, only without a Hall of Fame coach.

The UConn brand is still powerful enough to draw recruits, national attention, and perhaps even big-time coaching candidates next spring if Ollie doesn't work out. It will be a hard fight to keep his job.

"I don't have a ticker of things that once he gets to that point, I'll make a decision," Manuel said. "I want to see him operate as a coach and in observing and talking to Jim Calhoun and President (Susan) Herbst, when I feel that it's the right moment to make a decision for him or to move in a different direction, then I will."

So far, however, Ollie's players have responded better than anybody could have anticipated. UConn didn't get a single vote in the USA TODAY Sports preseason coaches poll, but just a week into the season it already owns one of the nation's most significant victories. Even in a sport where upsets happen almost every day, beating then-No. 22 Michigan State 66-62 was a true shocker.

"You can't call it just another win," said guard Shabazz Napier, one of just three contributors left from the 2011 national championship team. "He puts in the effort and work to make us as good as we are, and we want to do our best by playing as hard as we can and make sure we keep it going for his job and his opportunity to be the head coach here."

Now UConn's task is to keep it going. The truth is, though Napier and sophomore Ryan Boatright make a formidable backcourt, there's a reason this roster was picked to finish ninth in the Big East. Outside of freshman guard Omar Calhoun and versatile sophomore DeAndre Daniels, there's not a lot of size or supporting talent. There's no guarantee it will hold up through the grind of a season, especially when adversity strikes and the reality of its postseason ban sets in.

"There's nothing we can do, say, cry or pout about that," Boatright said. "It's a done deal. We have games in front of us and me being a competitor, I don't want to lose, period. The season we had last year, nobody wants to go through that again. It was depressing around here. Everybody's mindset is different, and everybody that came in bought in and we're here as one."

If that's true, Ollie can make a convincing case for the job. Last season UConn had far more talent but struggled with chemistry and motivation, finishing 20-14 with an embarrassing blowout loss to Iowa State in the NCAA tournament. If he can get this team to play with the same energy and togetherness they had against Michigan State, a lot of the questions about him will be answered – even without a postseason opportunity.

"Everybody's scrutinizing me, what I'm doing, what I'm not doing," Ollie said. "It comes with the territory. I tell these guys to be even-keeled. I'm going to make mistakes as a first-year coach, and everybody knows that. I want my guys to play the right way and I'm going to try and coach them the best possible way. That's all I can do."

Most coaches, however, would argue that 30 games – especially without the kind of job security to assure recruits – isn't a big enough body of work to judge. Given the difficult circumstances Ollie inherited, Auriemma said he hopes the evaluation isn't just based on wins and losses.

"You watch how a team plays and you can tell a lot about what the coach emphasizes in practice or what he stands for, the way a team responds to different situations," Auriemma said. "I think it's hard for anybody to say Kevin Ollie is going to be a good coach, a mediocre coach or a great coach. He's been a coach for exactly two years. The only thing can you judge him on right now is the character, what he stands for, what kind of human being he is and how he treats people. In that respect, he's on his way to the Hall of Fame."